i'm an adding an extra mix to the single, which will make the disc flow a little better (by alternating live and canned mixes) and take it up almost to 80 minutes, further justifying the two-cd set. it's going to be the complete mix, but without added lead parts, meaning it will combine all the pre-existing sound before it's converted into a concerto. i'm thinking it should be up in the next 12 hours or so.

my ears can be so remarkably sensitive at times. i've spent the last two days neuroticizing over a 1 db treble boost, and setting all kinds of playback levels and latency settings to be sure about it....

i think i've mentioned before that the songs only sound ideal in a minimal volume range, which is generally very loud. i've just resigned myself to this. i mean, the reality is that reproduction is so impossible to control that freaking out over a treble roll is just absolutely absurd. people are going to be listening to it on everything from the beats eq to fucking dolby noise reduction, and it's all going to completely negate my production decisions. i can't even tell you to listen to it flat, really, because the response out of the amp or pc speakers (or, god forbid, cell phone. seriously. don't do that. i'll track you down, take that cell phone out of your hands and beat you over the head with it. never. ever. not my shit, anyways. at least find some phones...) or whatever you're listening to it on is almost certainly not flat relative to my signal.

there's things that mastering companies can do to kind of stabilize it. i don't seriously have access to that kind of equipment. i can fake it with some plugins, but it's not seriously comparable. and, there's a problem with this, regardless - it's a generic gloss. you'd probably want to film me reacting to somebody else trying to master my material, because i'd likely just snap. i'm far too much of a control freak. in fact, i probably wouldn't even let it happen. i'd have to be sitting there in the room, and it's going to take a handful of engineers because i'm going to end up murdering the first few....

for right now, the compression i'm using is very responsive to shifts in volume. so, even when i control for gear, i need to hit that sweet spot to really get what i want. and this isn't the first time i've thrown myself for a loop in losing that sweet spot, then needed to spend a day or two reapproximating it...

you want to talk about the future of music? brain waves. fuck the gear. just let me send you raw math that you can download directly into your skull. it's the only end solution possible to get around it. and fucking bob ludwig can fuck off.